"Sellout?" He said, "Nah, no one was coming, so I just let these people in for free."
It was a crucial early lesson: Buy your own steak; it's cheaper.
On most nights, I was out till dawn, racing through Manhattan from club to club, scouting, booking, signing acts. I used to sit with Barbara Walters in back of the Latin Quarter, a famous Broadway hot spot owned by her father, Lou Walters. "Hey, Barbara, who's been filling the seats?" I'd ask her. I was in search of established acts, but was also trying to hit on the right package or trick to sell tickets. I have never been afraid to try even the craziest idea. Later on, I would sell Elvis tickets by advertising: "On sale Monday morning, 9:00 A.M., first come, first served." What does that even mean? Of course the first one gets served first. But I made headlines out of that. And everything I did was a limited edition. But what are they limited to? 82 million? 700 million? 455 million? I mean, there's no law about it. I think this is why I got along better with older men than with my contemporaries. When I told my ideas to people my age, they would wave me away, call me nutty. But when I brought these same ideas to people who had been around, such as Colonel Tom Parker or Frank Sinatra, they got it right away. They knew just who I was and just what I wanted to be. Not a junior agent, not a young man on a ladder to the executive suite, but P. T. Barnum!
I'll give you an example.
Around 1963, I had an idea drifting through my head. I wanted to put on a softball game at Yankee Stadium, in which Elvis would captain a team against a team captained by Ricky Nelson. I had booked Ricky Nelson at the Steel Pier in Atlantic City, but did not know anyone with the Yankees, or anyone with Elvis. I just figured the idea would generate the relationships. I called Dan Topping, who owned the Yankees. It took some persistence, but he finally agreed to meet me. We met in his office at the stadium. I said, "Mr. Topping, I want to rent your facility."
At first, he thought I was crazy. In those days, no one rented out stadiums. But when I made the pitch, his tone changed. "That's pretty interesting," he said. "Do you actually know Elvis Presley?"
"No," I said, "not yet."
"And besides, what makes you think that tens of thousands of people will pay to watch Elvis play softball? Do you understand how big this place is?"
"Sure," I told him. "I've been scalping your box seats for years."
"Come with me," he said, "I want to show you something."
He brought me down the ramp and out onto the field, then stood me at second base. "Look around," he said.
Have you ever stood in an empty baseball stadium? It's unbelievable, all those seats, each representing a person who has to be reached, marketed to, convinced, sold. It was intimidating, and it stayed with me. Whenever I am considering an idea, I picture the seats rising from second base at Yankee Stadium. Can I sell that many tickets? Half that many? Twice that many? In the end, the softball game did not come off, but neither did Dan Topping think I was crazy. An idea is only crazy, after all, until someone pulls it off.
Within a year or two, Directional Enterprises was putting on shows all across the country. I had a hit at the Brooklyn Paramount, a fantastic theater. One night, after curtain, two guys come in, big guys in flashy suits. One of them steps forward, the talker, you know the type. This is how it's gonna be, this is what you're gonna do. "From now on," he says, "me, you, and him is partners."
I consider, sort of confused, then say, "But I don't want partners."
"You don't understand," he tells me. "You're in Brooklyn. Brooklyn is our neighborhood. We get a piece of whatever happens in our neighborhood. So we're now partners."
I was tough, but not stupid tough, and now I was scared.
"Ask around," the man says, "find out who we are, and we'll be back tomorrow to work out the this and that."
I raced home in a panic and called my father. He had been around; he knew and had dealt with tough guys before. He grew up in the Bronx, after all, where if you were in business, there was really no avoiding the underworld. He had met Abe Reles and Meyer Lansky-all the players in the Jewish mob. He said, "Jerry, Jerry, take a breath. Calm down. It's okay. It's the way of the world."
"What do I do?" I asked.
"Tell me the story," he said. "Slowly, all the details. I want to see if I can figure out who these guys might be."
When I finished, he said, "Okay. Let me talk to somebody. You'll hear from me soon."
An hour later, he called back and said, "You are to be at [such and such a bar] on the Upper East Side tomorrow at 9:00 P.M., where you will meet a man. Talk to him. He will help you."
"Who is he?" I asked.
"Just see him."
"Okay."
"And Jerry."
"Yeah?"
"Don't be late. If you piss him off, it's not an angry letter he's going to send."
The next night, I went to the club on the East Side, a strip bar on First Avenue right out of The Sopranos. Someone took me to a room in back, where I was introduced to the man my father had told me about. He was the boss of one of the New York crime families. He was a tough man-I mean, you would not mess with him-but he had a code, and he played by that code, and he had an air of nobility. He was alone at his table, with a plate of food and a bottle of wine. The room was filled with his lieutenants. He said, "Sit." He had a size twenty-two neck and a giant head, like a head on an old Roman bust. He was huge-it was like someone came in every few hours and injected him with pasta. But he had a face, this great, kind, very human face, and I liked him immediately. I was scared, but I liked him. He poured me a glass of wine and said, "So tell me, what's the problem?"
"Well, these two guys came to see me in Brooklyn where I have a show going and they told me they're going to be my partners."
"Yes, so?"
"I don't want partners."
"But it's their neighborhood," said the boss. "You're taking money out of their store-you gotta give them a percentage."
"I don't want to."
"You don't want to? Why not?"
"Because I don't want to be involved in anything illegal," I said. "I pay my taxes. I just want to make my money and live my life."
He sat there for a moment, thinking, then said, "Here's what we're going to do. I'm going to tell these guys not to bother you. But, in return, you have to promise me something: You're never going to do anything illegal. In your whole life. What the world considers illegal."
He said this slowly, deliberately, letting the words sink in. He was a bright guy. I think he graduated from Fordham.
I said okay.
"No," he told me. "You have to promise it. You will never get involved with anything illegal inside or outside this country, because if you do, I'm coming back and taking a piece of everything you have."
"Okay," I said. "I promise."
"You're sure that's what you want?" he asked.
"Yes."
"You know, Jerry, you could make a lot of money doing stuff with us."
"Well, I want to see if I can make a lot of money doing stuff without you."
He looked at me, sizing me up, then said, "I want you here tomorrow at seven o'clock."
I went back the next night, drank with the boss, then the guys came in. The boss sat them down and said, "Let me explain something to you two. Jerry is now my nephew. He is under my protection. Nobody touches him. Nobody gets near him. In fact, if anything happens to him while he's in Brooklyn, you two guys are responsible."
After that, I could not go to the bathroom in Brooklyn without these two guys following to make sure I did not trip and bang my head on the toilet.
Even after the show closed, I continued to stop by the club on the East Side to say hello to the boss. We started a friendship that lasted the rest of our lives. He flew to Beverly Hills for my son Michael's Bar Mitzvah. The boss is still around. He's an old man now, but is still being watched by the FBI.
Sometime in the late 1970s, I had a conversation with Steve Ross, the chairman of Warner Bros. He wanted me to put
in some money so we could buy the Westchester Premier Theatre, which was near his house. By then I had long worked with Sinatra and Elvis, and many others, so it made sense. We could fill it up with top-drawer entertainment. "Beautiful," I said, "start writing the papers." A few days later, I get a call. It's the boss. He says, "Meet me at the Grotto. We need to talk." He meant the Grotto Azura, one of the oldest restaurants in Little Italy.
We sat in the main room, the boss with his back to the wall.
He said, "Jerry, you broke your promise."
"What promise?" I asked.
"Remember," he said, "you promised you would never get involved with anything illegal."
"Yeah," I said, "but I kept that promise."
"No, you haven't," he said. "You're buying the Westchester Premier Theatre, aren't you?"
"Yes."
"Well, who do you think owns the Westchester Premier Theatre? We do, through waste management. We have the garbage contract. And we have seats there we don't manifest. That's illegal. And I'm not getting out of the theater just because you're buying. Which means you will be involved in something the world considers illegal."
"Oh, shit," I said. "What should I do?"
"Don't buy it."
The next morning, I called Steve Ross and told him, "I'm not buying into this theater, and neither should you."
When I told him why, he dismissed me, saying, "Oh, come on, don't be ridiculous."
So I didn't buy into the theater, and he did, and it gave him a lot of trouble.
Over the years, as I booked acts, I became friends with the guys who ran the resorts in the Catskills, in the Poconos, in Vegas. Now and then, they would turn their theaters over to me for the thirty or so dead nights that followed New Year's. Nothing is selling anyway, why not give Jerry a shot? I would invent shows out of nothing, the wilder the better, parties and extravaganzas, packaged and marketed like mad. It became my trademark: "A Night in Paris," "A Night in London." Nutty stuff, scrap. I had an act I had been trying to break forever: Kimo Lee and the Modernesians, a sword dancer, a singer, and two girls swaying in grass skirts. I had them booked in the Latin Quarter, in New York City, for $750 a week, but wanted to move them to the next level. Then, one day, I get a call from Morris Landsbergh, who sort of ran the Flamingo in Las Vegas. I say sort of because Landsbergh was really just a front for Meyer Lansky. Landsbergh would walk around the casino all day in a blue coat, hair parted, saying, "Hey, how are ya," "Nice to have ya." "Hey, thanks for coming!"
"Jerry, I'm in a jam," Morris tells me. "I need an act for Christmas. What do you got?"
This is the moment: three lemons line up in the slot machine and you wait to see if the fourth will drop.
"How much can you pay?" I ask.
"Fifty thousand dollars a week," says Morris.
Okay. This was real money. At the time, the highest-paid performer in Vegas was the opera singer Mario Lanza, and he was getting fifty a week. Frank Sinatra and those guys were getting twenty-five.
"Oh, sure," I say, "I've got something."
"Well…"
"Well, what…?"
(I'm thinking.)
"What do you have?"
"Well, I will tell you what I have…"
(Still thinking.)
I had been reading James Michener's Hawaii. I had never been to Hawaii, but I loved the book. My mind was filled with volcanoes and pigs on spits, shiny dwarf apples shoved between their teeth, and, at the same time, I had this act I was trying to break, so naturally I concoct.
"I have an unbelievable show," I tell Landsbergh. "In fact, it's not just a show. It's an experience. It's called 'A Night in Hawaii.' "
" 'A Night in Hawaii '? What the hell is 'A Night in Hawaii '?"
" 'A Night in Hawaii,' " I tell him, "is fifty beautiful dancing girls. 'A Night in Hawaii ' is waitresses in grass skirts, pigs on spits, the mood of the islands. 'A Night in Hawaii ' is a mountain erupting and lava flowing as the music plays!"
"Wow," says Landsbergh. "That sounds like a hell of a show! But as great as it sounds, I don't know if it sounds like a fifty-thousand-dollar show. Now, if you had Arthur Godfrey…"
Arthur Godfrey was one of the first great TV stars. He had two shows on CBS: Talent Scouts and The Arthur Godfrey Hour. He also had a famous love for Hawaii. He played ukulele and did a whole Pacific islands routine.
"Well, it does!" I tell Landsbergh.
"Does what?"
"Have Arthur Godfrey. In fact, the show is called 'Arthur Godfrey's A Night in Hawaii.' "
"How much?"
"Fifty thousand dollars a week, maybe fifty-five thousand."
"Great! Done! Deal!"
And now I had to get Arthur Godfrey.
I waited until the end of the day, then went down Broadway to the theater where Godfrey taped Talent Scouts. There was a security guard with a clipboard and a gun. I have a theory. If you act like you're in charge, no one will stop you. So I go up this guy with a piece of paper in my hand and ask him a bunch of questions-"How long is your present shift?" "Did you find your training adequate to the task?"-say, "Thanks, you're doing a great job," pat him on the shoulder, then walk past him to the elevators. No problem. When I get up to the floor, I wander around until I find a dressing room with Godfrey's name on it. He was one of the biggest stars in the country-you were not supposed to just bang on his door, but, you know, the fourth lemon, the fourth lemon.
Knock, knock, knock.
"Who's there?"
"Jerry Weintraub."
"Oh, yeah, hey, Jerry, come in!"
He probably thought I was the cigar boy.
He was sitting in a chair, napkin around his neck, looking in the mirror, dabbing a pancake pad all over his face. In those days, they all did their own makeup. He was an elegant man with a clean, vanilla way about him. The singer Eddie Fisher said that Godfrey was anti-Semitic. The hotel he partly owned in Miami Beach, the Kenilworth, did not allow Jews. But he was nice to me. "What can I do for you?" he asked.
I said, "Well, Mr. Godfrey, I've come to you with an opportunity to make fifty thousand dollars a week."
"Wow, what is it?"
"It's a show in Las Vegas," I told him. "It's called 'Arthur Godfrey's A Night in Hawaii.' "
"You mean a floor show?" he asks.
"Yeah," I tell him. "In one of the big hotels."
"No, sorry, kid. It's my policy. I don't work live."
"Yeah, but fifty thousand dollars a week," I say. "Maybe more."
"Nope," he says. "Don't work live."
"Yeah, but listen," I say, "you'll be on stage with fifty beautiful Hawaiian girls, and here is the best part: You and I will go to Hawaii and pick them out personally, right off the beach!"
He looks up, like, Wait, FIFTY Hawaiian girls? Frowns and says, "Yeah, but it would still be live."
I went on and on, but could not talk him into it. He was scared to death of a live audience. Well, he was then, anyway, because he did call me years later, when his TV career was on the wane, and said, "Jerry, I'm ready to play Vegas. And I want to bring my horse on stage. And I want you to book it." And I did book it, and he did bring his horse on stage.
In the end, I was able to put a show together without Godfrey that worked for Morris Landsbergh. Kimo Lee and the Modernesians, the girls in grass skirts, and the volcano erupting night after night. In other words, the fourth lemon dropped.
Kimo Lee died young. In his will, he left me the rights to a song that had not done much for him. But it was later recorded by Elvis Presley, and after that by just about everyone in the business. It was called "Blue Hawaii."
Fun with Jane
By 1963, I had amassed a stable of talent. There was Kimo Lee and the Modernesians, but also Joey Bishop, Jack Paar, the Four Seasons, and many more. In this business, it only takes one, but who wants to live that way, on a single throw of the dice, or by wrapping yourself in the fortunes of a single artist, no matter how brilliant-the point, as the chaperones used to say at
the high-school dance, is to get out there and mix.
I represented two actors Walt Disney wanted for his upcoming Bon Voyage, starring Fred MacMurray and Jane Wyman. Mr. Disney flew me to LA first-class, then had a limousine bring me to the Beverly Hills Hotel, where I was set up in a bungalow. I was chauffeured to the Disney Lot, where I was given my own office and a secretary. Five days went by and all they said was, "Mr. Disney is not ready to see you yet." I sat forever. Now and then, my secretary buzzed, asking, "Don't you want to dictate a letter?" "Don't you want to make a call?" (I phoned my mother several times.) Finally, after five days, word came: The maestro was ready. As I remember it, I had to walk down a long hall with Oscars lining the walls on either side. By the time I reached the office at the end, I was intimidated, parched. I felt like I had come through the desert. I shook hands with Mr. Disney, sat down. He was at his desk, drawing, I imagined, a picture of Mickey (him) pounding Goofy (me) with a club. I was, in short, defeated before I heard the opening offer.
Mr. Disney said, "This is what we're going to do."
I said fine.
Mr. Disney said, "This is what your clients are going to get paid."
I said fine.
I learned a lot on this trip: about context, home field advantage, the cost of letting the other side establish its authority. I learned something else, too-about obsession, control. Before I left, I asked Mr. Disney what he was drawing. It was not Mickey hitting Goofy with a club. It was a design for the bathing suit Deborah Walley would wear in Bon Voyage. He did not have a costume designer do it. He did it himself. The man was intense, but in an admirable way. He believed he had to control his product, utterly, as the product was really just him in another way. It was a lesson I would learn myself years later, when I started my own production company.
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